Henry King Stanford Distinguished Professors Lecture Series, Hip Hop and the Global Influence of American Cultural Politics

The genre has “not only infiltrated the language, discourse, and hearts and minds of the U.S., but it has also widely begun to occupy the world around us,” Dr. Marcyliena Morgan said.
Hip Hop and the Global Influence of American Cultural Politics

The University of Miami College of Arts & Sciences Center for the Humanities celebrated ‌hip hop with a lecture entitled "Hip Hop and the Global Influence of American Cultural Politics" on Thursday, April 7, 2016. This celebration of hip hop included a live DJ, dancers, urban art, and spoken word performers. The event was part of the Henry King Stanford Distinguished Professors Lecture Series and was led by Dr. Marcyliena Morgan who is the founding executive director of the Hip Hop Archive and Research Institute as well as a professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University.
 
Dr. Morgan explained that hip hop is everywhere, with both a local and global cultural presence. The genre has “not only infiltrated the language, discourse, and hearts and minds of the U.S., but it has also widely begun to occupy the world around us,” Dr. Morgan said. Hip hop language and discourse has become a global model of how to simultaneously represent culture and society while celebrating and challenging traditions, the nation state, and identities.
 
The lecture showed the path hip hop followed to become one of the most important formats of music. The delivery of words, art, and dance show how the values of people all over the globe are produced and embraced as a worldview and a way of life. “Art elevates and refines and transforms experience,” Dr. Morgan said.

Watch the Center for the Humanities' Snapchat Story of this exciting event below:

April 12, 2016